


The Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction

by eldritcher



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Epilogue to Almagest, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:48:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29034195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: Fifteen years later, Harry loses a duel. It is all right.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Voldemort
Comments: 10
Kudos: 33
Collections: Epilogues to eldritcher's old stories





	The Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Almagest](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/750300) by eldritcher. 



> Epilogue to ǟʟʍǟɢɛֆȶ.

Raising a teenager, Harry mused, was an expensive endeavor. 

He was hovering over the roof of their shack at Innisfree, surveying the damage from Canopus's last Quidditch pick-up game with the Weasley children. 

Canopus's broomstick was a modded contraption, sleek and mean, and a pain in the arse. Semi-sentient as it was, despite Canopus's many protestations to the contrary, it jerked forward and back, chafing Harry's cock and balls. 

This broom disliked Harry on principle. 

"Can I help, Harry?" 

"Stay where you are," Harry barked. "You have done ample damage for the day." 

Six of the tiles on the roof were broken by Canopus's crash on the roof in pursuit of the Snitch. At least the boy had caught it. Harry was proud of him, despite the sorry fact that it was raining and there were six broken tiles on the roof. Canopus wanted to try out for the Falmouth Falcons. His dreams had been Harry's dreams once. 

He cast a patchwork of charms to keep the rains out for the night. Repairing the tiles was tomorrow's Harry's problem. 

It was time to see to dinner. 

\----

"Not fish again!" 

"If you want roast with trimmings, you know where Narcissa lives," Harry muttered. 

They lived by a lake. Unless Canopus had developed a fascination for lily pads or frogs, fish was the only available item on Harry's menu. 

Dumbledore had fed Harry frogs for weeks, when they had been on the run together. _Haute cuisine_. 

"I don't want to marry Rose," Canopus said abruptly. 

Where had that come from?

Harry had hoped that Canopus might marry Rose one day. He had never run out of plotting ways to become a Weasley, after all. 

"I don't know if it will work," Canopus continued, miserable and all of nineteen. 

Harry had been nineteen when he had gone on the run with Dumbledore. He had been twenty when he had met Voldemort under the constellations of Almagest. He had been twenty-two, and a lone, living man on the moon stranded in the Soyuz escape shuttle. He had mourned Dumbledore and Voldemort both. 

"What is wrong?" Harry asked Canopus gently, setting aside the rub he was mixing up for the fish. 

"What if Ron and Hermione no longer-" the boy scowled. 

Hadn't Harry been frightened too, that he might lose the Weasleys if he did not carry on and marry Ginny? 

"You are not ready to marry," Harry told Canopus. 

The boy was sweet on Rose. Perhaps one day, they would both be ready. 

Harry had married at the age of twenty-eight, on the Iberian peninsula, at Cape Finisterre, at the end of the world as the Romans had once believed. There, Merope had shined the brightest that night. There, unseen theremins had played Holst's planets. There, under Almagest's forty-eight, Harry had called Voldemort _dearest_ and kissed him under the moon they had once stood and bled upon. 

They had been each other's long before that, ever since the first time they had kissed in the forest of Selwood. 

\------

At dinner, Voldemort cast a glance at Harry, curious and concerned. Harry shook his head. 

"Don't talk with your eyes!" Canopus complained. "Why do you have to act so married?"

Harry suppressed a grin.

"Ready to duel me tomorrow, Harry?" 

The Duel was an old Black rite of passage that Narcissa set store by. The father and the son would duel, when the son was on the cusp of twenty. If the son won, he would one day inherit the father's wand. If the son lost, the wand would be buried with the father after his death. 

"Don't think I will go easy on you!" Harry warned Canopus lightly. 

That earned him laughter. 

\------

Afterwards, after Canopus had left, when it was just the two of them once more, Harry puttered about the homestead readying for bed.

"The roof is leaking." 

"Canopus sacrificed the roof for a Snitch. I tried patching it from the outside." 

"I can take a look tomorrow." 

Harry shook his head. Voldemort avoided heights and flying whenever he could. Their adventure to the moon had not erased his love for the cosmos, but it had left him with various phobias that he tried to softly evade everyday. After all these years, there was little he could hide from Harry, and little he wanted to hide. 

"Just fix it for the night, won't you?" Harry asked. "I will do the rest tomorrow." 

Voldemort hummed and patched the roof from the inside, mostly distracted by the sight of Harry undressing for bed. 

Even after all these years, the attention left Harry flustered and ready. 

"Look at you," Voldemort murmured, coming to Harry and kneeling before him, pressing many kisses to belly and hip and groin.

Oh, the night was done for, Harry thought, as Voldemort's mouth cloaked his cock wet and warm in its embrace. 

Afterwards, Harry caught him by the nape and said grumpily, "I wanted to fuck you." 

"Win your duel tomorrow, and you may," Voldemort said, drunken on Harry's want, eyes bright in happy desire. 

\-------

The duel was at the Burrow, behind the house. 

Molly had laid out a feast of crumpets and biscuits and cake.

"Tea?" She asked Harry.

"I duel better on an empty stomach," Harry said, grinning.

He had got himself the most dapper dueling robes, blue and weighted at the ends, as the ones Dumbledore had once worn on the plains of Baikonur. 

Canopus wore his Quidditch gear. He stood under an old beech, showing off flashy spells to Rose, besotted little gremlin that he was when it came to her. 

"Mark my words, they will be married before next Christmas!" Molly gossiped.

"A winter wedding!" Narcissa exclaimed, joining them, eavesdropping pest that she was. "We could have it in London." 

"A summer wedding," Harry protested. "Then we can host it by the lake."

"It is not our fault that you picked the most inhospitable shack in all of Britain to live in," Narcissa noted. 

"She has a point," Molly said, laughing. 

Harry lived in Innisfree, in a cabin by the lake. There they had the stars and a theremin. There they had each other. They needed nothing else. 

\-------

They bowed to each other. 

Canopus was intensely focused, thin face set in determination. The boy reminded Harry of Sirius so. 

Harry's wand was of yew and holly, and it had cast its first spell on the moon. Harry had clung to it and wept, mourning Dumbledore and Voldemort, all alone on an escape pod that took him back to earth. 

Swift, swift, swift was Canopus's movements. He moved as Bellatrix or Sirius would have, with an antelope's grace, spinning as the dervishes Harry had seen in Kazakhstan once. Spells skittered here and there, within striking distance of his dancing feet, but he moved confidently through the arcs of Harry's offensive, using the nimble grace of his youth against Harry's slower movements. 

"You aren't as bad as I feared," Harry called out, teasing. 

"We have only begun!" Canopus shouted back, high on the thrill of the duel. 

They spun about, again and again, playing to each other spell and swerve. 

Canopus's jinxes were landing everywhere in scattered aim, trapping Harry where he stood. More by fluke than by skill, one struck Harry, and he hopped back to his feet swiftly.

"Expelliarmus!" Canopus called, as Harry tried to balance himself. 

That spell, Harry's spell, obeyed Canopus for the first time, and that wand of yew and holly flew from his hands to the boy. 

"I did it!" Canopus exclaimed, in plain disbelief. "Harry! I did it!"

So proud of the dear boy, Harry went to embrace him. 

\--------  
  
"Come on!" 

"Hold your horses!" Harry muttered, sipping his tea. "You could have offered me a massage, you know."

He was aching all over, after the exertion of the duel.

"There is no time for that," Voldemort replied, and grabbed Harry to Apparate. 

They stood on familiar plains, where they had once loved in an earthen hut, where Dumbledore and Voldemort had plotted to steal the shuttle from the cosmodrome, where Aberforth had fed them goat-milk and arrayed them in bright Kazakh wools. 

It was dusk, and Harry stood with Voldemort atop a sandy crest where they had once come with Dumbedore's telescope. Voldemort had shown Harry Almagest's constellations that night. 

How many times, in those years of mourning, had Harry wandered outside Aberforth's pub, to look up at the stars? 

Harry watched Voldemort fuss about with the telescope, setting it up on a tripod and then calibrating its lenses with magic. All these years of broken grief, and a starry wanderer that looked to the skies remained in Voldemort. 

"The Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction," Voldemort was saying. "This heavenly spectacle has never been as clear from earth as it is tonight, in more than eight centuries!"

Harry went to help him with the telescope. Together, as they had once on a spaceship, they worked to direct and focus the lens to the right quadrant of the dusk skies. 

"Go on," Harry said, stepping back.

"You first," Voldemort said quietly. Harry grinned and went to look at the sky. There was Jupiter's unwavering bright. There was Saturn standing ringed. They were close, two celestials conjunct. 

"They were father and son, Saturn and Jupiter, in Roman lore. The first peaceful transfer of power happened from Saturn to Jupiter. The rule of the Gods passed from the first of them to the greatest of them."

Saturn's rings surrounded the luminous blaze of Jupiter. 

Protection. Belonging. Harmony. 

Canopus had won the duel. Harry had been so proud of him. 

On the plains of Baikonur, boys herded home goats and camels. Girls carried large earthen pots of water from the Syr Darya river. Voldemort beheld Saturn and Jupiter with quiet and wistful joy. 

How many times had he looked up at the moon so? How many times had he looked up at the Pleiades so, and smiled when he caught a glimmer of Merope? 

Voldemort had brought him here, to view the conjunction of a father and a son, to show Harry that he knew how dear Canopus had become to him, to show Harry that he knew how fiercely glad Harry was that the wand would go to the boy after his death. 

The agony columns in Harry's newspaper spoke of love languages. 

This was theirs, this song of love, crafted once more under Almagest's constellations.

"Dearest," Harry said softly.

Voldemort turned to him immediately, hearkening to Harry's voice as swallow to summer. 

"Dearest," Harry said once more, and kissed the long-loved heart of him.

  


* * *

  


**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Gratitude, once more, to Gaisang, whose poetry inspired ǟʟʍǟɢɛֆȶ.  
> If you are reading [ǟʟʍǟɢɛֆȶ](https://eldritcher-hp-fics.dreamwidth.org/tag/almagest), please heed the warnings.


End file.
